At the Barney School of Business, Ye’s courses include Introduction to Marketing (MKT310), Marketing Management (MKT606), Marketing Strategy (MKT454W), Marketing Communications (MKT325), Digital Marketing (MKT990), and Digital Marketing Management (MKT756 in Spring 22), both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She believes that preparing her students for their professional future is at the heart of her teaching.
As a researcher, Ye’s primary focus is to understand the dynamic changes occurring in these emerging contexts and to examine their influences on marketing strategies and subsequent consumer responses, and/or student learning outcomes. Her current research interests are revolved around three main themes: e-commerce, sustainability/corporate social responsibility (CSR), and pedagogical research on innovative education. In the area related to sustainability/CSR, Ye’s research has focused on consumer well-being and public health. She is interested in expanding her research further to understand what it means to be socially responsible in the digital media domain and other emerging markets such as luxury. Ye’s paper on how luxury brands can increase Gen Z’s luxury consumption by creating immersive and circular experiences that enhance co-consumption opportunities is under review.
Being an educator, she has been exploring some innovative education models such as competency-based education and project-based learning through her research work. “I believe that innovative teaching and learning is becoming paramount to today’s changing world and student success,” Ye says. “With my marketing colleagues at UHart, we have recently published a peer-reviewed journal that demonstrated an innovative pedagogical framework (i.e., peer-teaching) and related strategies (i.e., jigsaw). I am interested in continuing my research in this area to explore novel teaching methods and curricula.”
Ye knows that her research work has a positive impact on her teaching. “I believe that teaching and research are deeply intertwined as they inform and complement each other,” she explains. “I enjoy teaching around areas that I research and engage in discussions with students about the topics—it serves as a source of inspiration and informs my scholarship.”
During the pandemic when classes shifted to an online format, Ye noticed that there were unexpected student absences for various reasons (including personal, medical, and technological issues) that were an obstacle to collaborative learning. She used this as an opportunity to initiate an effective way of learning, recording her lectures over the summer and introducing a flipped classroom approach in the fall of 2020. She also integrated experiential learning components into her teaching style. To develop an atmosphere conducive to learning, students are encouraged to be interactive and exchange ideas through class discussions and projects. In doing so, students are exposed to more than just the core content provided by the lecture, as their classroom experience is supplemented by real examples and hands-on projects.
Today, there is a growing demand for business educators to prepare graduates to adapt to the challenges of the marketplace. As the marketplace becomes more competitive, the expectation for newly hired employees to add value to the organization immediately and demonstrate long-term career potential is only increasing. Ye’s advice for aspiring marketers: “As a marketer, you should be creative and able to effectively communicate with many like-minded people within and outside the company, but don’t underestimate the importance of analytics. With the growing prominence of data, it is becoming increasingly imperative that you can work with data comfortably. Additionally, I am a firm believer that success in business requires the ability to demonstrate enthusiasm, motivation, and excellent written and verbal communications skills.”
Christine Ye, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Barney School of BusinessFor marketing students to be better prepared for their future careers, I highly recommend that both soft skills (e.g., communication skills, team skills, ethics) and technical skills (e.g., learning of specific types of software, programming languages, and/or analytic tools) are constantly cultivated. Also, I encourage students to consider taking a couple of marketing courses (e.g., MKT310) or an internship in the area if they wish to pursue a marketing career.